1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a rhythm pattern generating apparatus for generating rhythm pattern information in response to and based on rhythm pattern information formed of a plurality of musical instrument sounds.
2. Description of the Related Art
Recently, artificial intelligence (AI), factory automation (FA) and office automation (OA) have been developed and demand for an intelligent (flexible) system and a sensitive process which can be easily used by humans and is compatible with a human has been increased. In response to this demand, the process of handling an art in which human sensitivity is maintained is performed. However, a "flexible" system is still far from being achieved, and the need to develop the technology for forming a "flexible" system is increasing.
Such a need also exists in the musical world. For example, in playing a drum, a so called "session" is performed. In the session, a drum performance by a player is conducted in parallel with other drum players. In recent years, with progress in development of electronic instruments, the musical instrument performs by itself in parallel with the performance of an electronic musical instrument such as a rhythm instrument performed by one player. If the rhythm pattern can automatically respond to the rhythm pattern generated by the player, it is possible to enable amateurs other than a music professional to greatly increase interest in music, thereby contributing to the development of the music industry. On the other hand, many rhythm pattern generating apparatuses have been realized, in which the rhythm pattern is automatically produced even if the player does not perform anything. Therefore, the player can concentrate on the melody rather than the rhythm, enabling a musical instrument to be played with more variety.
In a conventional rhythm pattern generating apparatus capable of outputting a rhythm pattern in response to the input of the rhythm pattern by the player, a human previously considers the information as to which rhythm pattern is input and it is strictly described in the form of the table which output rhythm pattern is to be generated in response to which rhythm pattern is input. The control program make access to the table for the information of the rhythm pattern obtained from the electronic musical instrument performed by the player and performs the program, thereby generating a rhythm pattern in response to the rhythm pattern.
In another conventional example of the rhythm pattern generating apparatus capable of outputting rhythm pattern in response to the input of the rhythm pattern formed by a player, the relation rule is derived from a pair of discretional input rhythm patterns and the output rhythm pattern is recited by a program. The information of the rhythm pattern performed by a player is converted in accordance with the above relation rule, thereby producing the rhythm pattern in response to the rhythm pattern.
On the other hand, another conventional prior art rhythm pattern generating apparatus produces a rhythm pattern automatically. The data of the rhythm pattern is previously stored by the player in the memory and is read out with fidelity, and thereby the rhythm pattern is automatically generated.
However, in one of the conventional examples using table type of the rhythm pattern outputting the rhythm pattern in response to an input of the rhythm pattern by a player, an apparatus using a table is provided. In this type, all the combinations of the input rhythm patterns and the output rhythm pattern which should be considered they should be described strictly in the form of the table. Therefore, in the above conventional example, where the rhythm pattern described at the table is input, the apparatus can reply to the input rhythm pattern correctly, but where an irregular rhythm pattern other than the rhythm pattern recited in the table is input. Thus, the conventional example cannot respond to an irregular input rhythm pattern.
In the conventional example in which the relation rule is programmed, it is very difficult to obtain the relation rule from the pair of a discretional input rhythm pattern and an output rhythm pattern and the relation rule has to be corrected and changed whenever the player is changed.
Further, in these two conventional examples, in order to provide data of a predetermined time period with regard to information as to whether the rhythm sound "is produced or not produced" the data of (the number of kinds of rhythm sound).times.(time period) is necessary, thereby enabling the data amount to be extremely large and making a real time process difficult. In particular, in order to make a real musical expression possible, the velocity representing the strength of the rhythm sound is needed to be provided in the form of data. In the prior art in which a great amount of data is required, it was almost impossible to deal with the velocity of the sound in the form of data.
On the other hand, in the conventional example of the rhythm pattern automatic generating apparatus for automatically producing a rhythm pattern, the rhythm pattern previously prepared by the player is merely produced with a good fidelity. Therefore, a prior art automatic rhythm pattern generating apparatus can perform a rhythm pattern efficiently or repeatedly with this case. But when the player wants to change the rhythm pattern to some extent, all the variation patterns are provided and must be previously stored in the memory as data.